What do you like about writing?
I talked to a group of boys today about writing and how they felt about it. Their responses were perceptive and showed a way forward for those of us working with them.
What do you like to write about?
This brought up the usual things such as aliens, the future, dragons and comic heroes. When I suggested that they could make comics on the web they didn’t really believe me. My favourite place to do this at the moment is ArtisanCam’s Super Hero Comic Maker.
The group wanted the freedom to write about what they were interested in and it seems to me that this is one place where blogging could be useful. If we introduce children to blogs and start to comment on them we will eventually create a blogging community within the classroom. Then we can talk about the different types of blog and the children can write about what interests them.
What helps you to write?
Here the boys were adamant that they needed to ‘do’ things and then write about them. I would not dispute this fact and many teachers are actively engaged in providing first hand experiences for the class. But how do we move children on from this to being able to write about the thoughts and ideas that are in their heads rather than those that they have directly experienced? Pie Corbett has some examples of developing the ’seeing’ inside your head and doing that ‘mad stary thing’ where you focus your concentration on the images in your head and find words to describe them.
These ideas will certainly give us something to think about as we plan the next few weeks literacy sessions. What do your class think about writing and what do they like to write about most?
Whilst I was looking for the comic url I came across the picture book maker. This is fantastic.
